Buying a Home Represents Your Single Biggest Investment and Debt.

As such, the home buying process can be one of the most exciting, but sometimes also stressful, experiences you ever go through. This may be true whether you’ve bought many homes or you’re looking to buy your first, whether you’re in the market for a new primary residence, an investment property or that perfect vacation getaway. Moreover, never has the real estate market offered more great opportunities, or been fraught with more risks, than now. There are many factors to consider and many decisions to make. That’s why, when buying, it’s crucial for you to have all the available resources necessary to make a well-informed decision, together with the time required to make complete use of them. That’s also why you should enlist the help of a trusted real estate professional who’ll be able to provide you with a professional consultation at each step of the buying process.

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Finding and Purchasing a Home Steps

Define your goals, research your options, make your plans!

Given that buying a home is such a big step, it’s all the more important for you to educate and prepare yourself as much as possible in advance. This means clearly determining why you’re buying and what kind of home you’re looking for. And because buying and financing a home are so closely related, it also means examining your current financial situation and projecting how much you can afford.Once you’ve answered these questions, even tentatively, you’ll be in a better position to research your housing and mortgage options, as well as create an action plan and timelines for moving forward. You may want to do this yourself, but you may also benefit by consulting an experienced real estate professional right from the start.

Contact a real estate professional

Buying real estate is a complex matter at the best of times, given that there are so many factors to consider and no two homes or transactions are alike. However, with all the unique opportunities and potential pitfalls of the current market, it’s even more important for you to contact a real estate professional once you’ve definitely decided to buy. In choosing a real estate professional to guide you through the property search, financing, negotiation and transaction processes, you should consider their local market knowledge, experience and track record.

Get pre-approved for a loan!

​​Generally, it is recommended that you get pre-approved for a loan before you start viewing homes with the serious intention of buying. The pre-approval process involves meeting with a lender and authorizing them to examine your current financial situation and credit history. On the basis of this examination, the lender will provide you with a document that details how much you can borrow to buy a home.You may want to consider looking online to see what different lenders offer, or contacting your local bank or credit union.

The benefits of pre-approval

✔ You’ll have information about what you can afford and be able to plan accordingly

✔As a qualified, motivated buyer you’ll be taken more seriously when you make an offer on a home

✔Lenders can tell you whether you qualify for any special programs that will enable you to afford a better home (particularly if you’re a first-time buyer)

Real estate financing is available from many sources, and an experienced real estate professional should be able to suggest lenders with a history of offering excellent mortgage products and services.

View homes and select THE ONE

Simply put, the key to the home search process is knowing what you’re looking for. Among other things, that means distinguishing between “must-haves” and “like-to-haves”. To help you to target your search and define your home preference priorities, we included a Cactus Country Dream Home Check List so you can evaluate each home you tour and make sure it measures up perfectly!

Here are a few recent facts about the search process that might put your experience in perspective:

✔90% of buyers use the Internet to search for homes
✔The typical buyer searches for 12 weeks and views 12 homes
✔197% of buyers view real estate agents as useful in the home search process

There are many benefits to starting the search process online! Cactus Country Property Professionals agents want their clients home search to be as easy and convenient as possible! We place our listing’s on The MLS Search, Virtual Tours and across our social media network. We want you to get all the information on your favorite listings as well as see all the features, gather insight on the surrounding neighborhood and even share the properties photo’s and video’s with your family and friends!

However, it’s also important to view homes in person. While their property details may seem similar online, homes can actually be very different in terms of layout, design, workmanship and other aspects. In addition, you should ideally view homes with the help of an experienced and eagle-eyed real estate professional who’ll notice things you might miss, provide expert analysis, and act as an impartial sounding board.

Make an offer and negotiate with the seller

​​Now that you’ve found the home you’d like to buy, it’s time to make an offer. Your state or local real estate association has developed the contracts that are generally used for transactions in your area. These contracts enable you to specify a sale price and also include many clauses for specifying various terms of purchase, such as the closing and possession dates, your deposit amount, and other conditions. You should carefully review these clauses with your real estate professional to ensure that they express your desired offer. In addition to drawing up the contract, your real estate professional should be happy to address all your questions about the offer process.

*Once you’ve written the offer, your real estate professional should present it to the seller and/or the seller’s representative. At that point, the process – given that a home’s eventual sale price is subject to supply and demand – will depend on the kind of market you’re in. Generally though, the seller can accept your offer, reject it, or counter it to initiate the negotiation process. Successive counter-offers, with deadlines for responding and meeting conditions, will be exchanged between you and the seller until a mutually-satisfactory pending agreement is reached or the negotiations breakdown.

Negotiations can involve many factors relating to different market conditions, homes and sellers.

Secure your financing

​Once you have a pending agreement, it’s time to go back to your chosen lender to finalize your mortgage details so you can close the deal. This means finalizing your down payment, interest rate, regular payment schedule and any other financial conditions associated with the closing. As noted in the section on loan pre-approval, if you’ve already been pre-approved with a lender for a certain loan and home purchase, this phase of buying your new home should be a relatively straightforward matter that centers around finalizing the loan details and signing the mortgage papers. As the old saying goes, ‘let the buyer beware’. Particularly in these times, when so many buyers are suffering the consequences of having not fully understood their financing decisions, it’s crucial for you to work with people you trust. In this regard, a good real estate professional can be a true friend for life.

Close the deal

If you’ve efficiently taken care of everything connected with purchasing your new home, the experience of taking ownership will be a positive joy with no surprises. Key steps to the closing, also referred to as the escrow or settlement, include:

✔Getting a title search – an historical review of all legal documents relating to ownership of the property – to ensure that there are no claims against the title of the property. It is also necessary to purchase Title Insurance in case the records contain errors or there are mistakes in the review process.

✔ The final walk through – you should be given the chance to look at the home to make sure it’s in the same condition as when you signed the sale agreement.

The settlement

Typically, on the Closing Date you’ll go to a lawyer’s, real estate professional’s, or escrow agent’s office to verify and sign all the paperwork required to complete the transaction. The settlement will include paying your closing costs, legal fees, property adjustments and transfer taxes. At that point, you’ll receive the property title and copies of all documentation pertaining to the purchase.

We met Maureen July 2010, we found her website via Internet when we were searching to purchase our first property in Phoenix, Arizona. She was the only Realtor that answered all our questions immediately, and we then made arrangements to meet with Maureen in Phoenix, so that she could show us some properties.S he met us at our hotel, which was quite a distance away from her offices, picked us up, as we didn't have our own vehicle and drove us to these properties.

Both myself and my husband took too her immediately! She is very professional, very down too earth, and most importantly - extremely honest! She went beyond the call of duty to assist us. She helped us through the entire process, which at the time was very stressful, as purchasing a property outside Canada is a different process. Even though I am sure we tried her patience, she remained patient with us and forever helpful! We have purchased two properties from Maureen, and will remain in contact with her, as we consider her to be a friend.